This invention relates to medical techniques and equipment for determining motility and peristalsis in tubular organs that transport their contents. In particular, this invention relates to catheters for obtaining signals from such organs.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The primary functions of many organs includes the transport of their contents through the organ. Determination of the characteristics of that transport, i.e. motility and/or peristalsis, has important diagnostic value. The two primary conventional approaches for determination of motility and peristalsis of tubular organs are manometry and imagery.
Conventional manometry approaches measure pressure changes to characterize the contraction sequences in a narrow section of an organ to be examined. The pressure measurements be made by semiconductor pressure transducers or perfusion techniques in which pressure changes are measured in a catheter through which a constant stream of fluid flows. Organ contractions result in reduction and/or obstruction of the flow which causes measurable pressure changes.
Conventional perfusion devices require catheter tubes at least about 1 mm. diameter for each channel. Multichannel with up to eight measuring channels result in undesirably large diameter catheters. Further, the fluid introduced by the perfusion catheter into the organ may impair the organ function, particularly with long term monitoring or measurement.
Conventional imagery approaches are principally suitable for showing motility, for example in the esophagus. When such approaches are use in the intestinal area, the lack of convenient techniques for three dimensional discrimination between images results in undesirable image overlap. In addition, such techniques are relatively expensive for both acquisition of equipment and operation.